I do not want any puzzles. Puzzles stop the game and take you out of the game. You spend an hour solving yet another slider, color, sound, maze, or keypad puzle before you can continue playing the game. It gets tired very quickly. How many novels would you read if you had to solve a puzzle every few pages? Think of some of the classic adventure games such as Sybria I/II. I doubt that they conained a total of 2-3 puzzles. Increasingly, puzzles are a substitute for story. Some while ago I played a reasonably current and somewhat popular adventure game. Excluding puzzles, I completed the game in three hours. How much story could there be? In fact, this was not an adventure game. It was a puzzle game.

Understand, I make a distinction between puzzles and problems. Using what you have learned, logic, and what is at hand enables you to solve a problem. The game does not stop. You remain in the game. Let us be honest. Most puzzles are really very silly.

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The cleanest thing in your house is your cat

I like all kinds of puzzles, though I'm not terribly fond of sliders, mazes, or timed challenges. I don't mind getting "stuck" from time to time, though if the story is very good, I do tend to be more frustrated with especially difficult puzzles right at the end. I want to know how the story is going to be resolved/how the mystery will be solved! Just personal preference -- I like the puzzle difficulty to decrease a bit for the last 15 to 20 percent of story-heavy games.

Becky, I agree with you about the puzzles that get so hard at the end that on a few I have given up. It just isn't fun anymore, but I would love to see the end of it.

I love all kinds of puzzles whether logic, mechanical, inventory, and even sliders ( I loved the little sliding puzzles that I could get when I was a kid). Sound ones or musical ones aren't too bad for me either cause I play piano and sing in church choirs. I just love the challenge of puzzles as long as they are reasonable and not extremely difficult. I like simple mazes, but I usually seem to just wander in circles cause I am trying to find things and seem go back the same direction I came from originally. All I ask for is NO TIMER !!! I am thankful for walkthroughs, especially MaG's when the going gets tough!!!

Darleen, I really wouldn't want to play an adventure game without puzzles. So I do agree that adventure games need puzzles that work well in the story. I love good story lines too. But I guess the best games are the ones with great stories and puzzles that fit with the story.

I really like of all the kinds of Puzzle, but i think the puzzles has that to be part of history, i hate puzzles it doesn’t make sense and also not like of games that are full of puzzles, the game becoming a little bored.

Love Maria

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Yes,though i go through the valley of deep shade,i will have no fear of evil;for you are with me, your rod and your support are my comfort. Salmo23:4

I find it the other way around. There are very few puzzle/adventures being made.

Most of my favorite kinds of puzzles are those that aren't part of the story. They may or may not fit in with the gameworld. For example, I enjoyed playing Aura because of the puzzles and the pretty gameworld. I couldn't tell you much about the story though, except that there wasn't much of one.

Here are some examples of "puzzles" I don't like that fit in with the story:

Stealth "puzzles"

"Puzzles" where your character can die by saying the wrong thing or not moving fast enough.

Inventory puzzles that depend solely on having the right object in your inventory -- in other words, "find the object" puzzles.

Conversation puzzles, especially those that result in "game over" if you make the wrong choice -- or having to start the whole conversation over.

Having to wander around looking for the next character with something new to say in order to trigger the availability of objects -- because if your character doesn't know he has a use for an object he won't pick it up. This is essentially trial and error.

Having to wander around looking for the next character with something new to say in order to trigger yet another conversation with some other character.

Puzzles I enjoy include

sliders

mechanical puzzles

logic puzzles

inventory puzzles of the kind found in "Return to Mysterious Island," where different objects can perform the same function, and where you can build new inventory out of objects that you find.

There are very very few games that have a story anywhere near as satisfying as a good book or movie. So when I want a story, I go for the book or movie. When I play a game, I want something a book or movie can't provide.

Jenny100 and I are of like mind.For me, a game must have puzzles/challenges, and I think those type are becoming much less common. Favorite puzzles:- anything mechanical- logic and math related- spacial - both 2D and 3D - eg. mazes, sliders, jigsaws - sorting out the back story by discovering clues in the environmentPuzzles I dislike:- timed/stealth/dexterity- inventory 'try everything on anything and everyone'- conversation trees- word and music based (I'm just plain bad at these)

To be fair I think that Gobboby has a strong point. I think that puzzles have long since been a waste of space. Anyone who has played AGs for a number of years has come across the same tired old puzzles again and again.

The worst are those with totally illogical solutions: Jam a lift, you have a solid steel bar, easy peasy, No that doesn’t work, try the top off a drink can that you can bend in half with two fingers, Bingo! The two ton life is jammed. Come on.

In the early years when there were no walkthroughs you had no choice but to persevere with the puzzles and their crazy solutions. Now games are hardly on the market when a walkthrough is available, which makes the time and effort in placing puzzles in a game in the first place a waste of time, you just read the answers.

I also agree with Gobboby that Syberia pointed the way forward, but though it’s now an old game, no one has learned anything from it, at least not in the games I have played since.